Movies
Pleasantville
(New Line Cinema). Critics are lukewarm about this
Truman Show knockoff. The premise: Two '90s kids are transported into a
Father Knows Best -type sitcom and shake up its prissy black-and-white
world. Their latter-day innovations: emotion and--as a sign that an individual
has experienced it--color. This divides the town into two camps, color and
black-and-white, whereupon the film goes downhill. Rife with moral didacticism
and lapses in logic (how can the black-and-white mobs get so angry yet not
burst into color?), Pleasantville turns into a "leaden political
parable" about intolerance (Joe Morgenstern, the Wall Street Journal ).
(This fan site has a Pleasantville message board.)
Apt
Pupil
(Sony Pictures Entertainment). After director Bryan Singer's
surprise hit The Usual Suspects (1995), Apt Pupil is deemed a
disappointment. A teen-ager (Brad Renfro) discovers an old Nazi war criminal
(Ian McKellen) living under a false name in his town and blackmails him into
giving detailed accounts of Nazi atrocities. Renfro offers up the "dead-eyed
sang-froid only a 16-year-old suburbanite can pull off" (Lisa Schwarzbaum,
Entertainment Weekly ), and McKellen is called "a supremely gifted actor
at the top of his form" (Jay Carr, the Boston Globe ). The film is said
to be uneven, though, and when you add directorial missteps to the
uncomfortable subject matter, the result is pans mixed with queasily laudatory
reviews. (Watch the trailer at the official
site.)
Soldier
(Warner Bros.). Critics call this painfully predictable and clichéd futuristic
sci-fi film a "mechanical, violent military-porn fantasy"(Schwarzbaum,
Entertainment Weekly ): Shane meets Terminator meets
Road Warrior . An extremely buff Kurt Russell plays the title soldier of
the future who, when decommissioned, is relegated to the horrors of the slag
heap planet, where he discovers human emotion and rises to the defense of his
fellow outcasts. Soldier 's small number of fans call it a "sanctimonious
kick-ass movie" (Carr, the Boston Globe ). (Visit the official site.)
Books
King
of the World: The Rise of Muhammad Ali
, by David Remnick (Random
House). The editor of The New Yorker takes on one of the most
written-about sports figures in American history and "succeeds, more than any
previous book, in bringing Ali into focus" (Allen Barra, the Wall Street
Journal ). Critics lavish praise on Remnick, not just for his analysis of
Ali but because he is said to have brilliantly invoked the complex intersection
of boxing and race relations in the 1960s. (Explore this gallery of photos of Ali that have appeared in the New York
Times . Free registration required.)
Evening
, by Susan Minot (Knopf). Reviewers adore Minot's
"stunning" and "elegant and polished" (Michiko Kakutani, the New York
Times ) new novel. The book enters the mind of a dying woman and explores
her painkiller-enhanced memories of her one great encounter with love. Critics
agree that the novel lapses at times into "breathless overwriting" (David
Wiegland, the San Francisco Chronicle ) but remains "a narrative of
considerable ambition and complexity" ( The New Yorker ). (Read an
excerpt and an interview with the author here.)
Bech
at Bay: A Quasi-Novel
, by John Updike (Knopf). The third installment in
the adventures of Henry Bech, an aging urban Jewish writer, is deemed "one of
Updike's less ambitious works" but still "filled with pleasures" (Brian Morton,
the Chicago Tribune ). Although said to be occasionally self-indulgent,
this collection of interconnected stories is hailed as generally witty, and its
sendups of the publishing business are reported to have hit home. However,
critics also suspect that Updike is getting tired of Bech. (Read an excerpt from the book. Free registration required.)
Recent
"Summary Judgment" columns
Oct.
21:
Movie -- Beloved ;
Movie -- Bride of
Chucky ;
Movie -- Practical
Magic ;
Theater -- Corpus
Christi , by Terrence McNally (Manhattan Theatre Club);
Music -- Live:
1966 , by Bob Dylan;
Book -- The Poisonwood Bible , by Barbara Kingsolver.
Oct.
14:
Movie -- Holy
Man ;
Movie -- The
Mighty ;
Movie -- Slam ;
Movie -- A Night at
the Roxbury ;
Dance -- Swan
Lake (Neil Simon Theatre, New York City);
Book -- Work in
Progress , by Michael Eisner with Tony Schwartz;
Book -- Pure Drivel , by Steve Martin.
Oct.
7:
Movie -- Antz ;
Movie -- What Dreams
May Come ;
Movie -- Happiness ;
Book -- I Married a
Communist , by Philip Roth;
Television -- The
Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer ;
Art --"Van Gogh's Van Goghs: Masterpieces From the Van Gogh Museum,
Amsterdam."
Sept.
30:
Movie -- Ronin ;
Movie -- Urban
Legend ;
Book -- Two
Cities , by John Edgar Wideman;
Opera -- A Streetcar
Named Desire ;
Music -- Painted
From Memory , by Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach;
Television -- Felicity ;
Art --"From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art."
--Eliza
Truitt
